


Pandyssia Shorts

by Neriad13



Series: The Doom of Pandyssia [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: ...for the time being, But also a lot of sweetness, CW: Sexism, Gen, Horror, Pandyssia (Dishonored), Rat Plague | The Doom of Pandyssia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 13:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12727497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neriad13/pseuds/Neriad13
Summary: They come from disparate walks of life - of beggary and high society, of scientific study and layman’s understanding. They are alcoholics, men of the cloth, schemers, artists, natural philosophers, gossips, soldiers, lovers, healers, adventurers, mystics. Some of them seek to escape the life they left behind. Some of them place all their hope in the future their actions will create. But one thing is certain amongst all of them:Like moths to a flame, Pandyssia draws them to its untamed shores.___Short character introductions to the major players in 'The Doom of Pandyssia.' Not necessary to the understanding of the bigger fic, but definitely recommended.





	1. Eneas Urvano - Mercenary

**Author's Note:**

> In this chapter: a boyo gets drunk with his psychic mom. As y'do.

_Month of Seeds, 1804  
Bastillian, Serkonos_

Urvano raced through the tight, winding streets of his hometown, the ground flying beneath his feet, the ink of the envelope he was clutching smearing in his sweaty hand. It was barely Spring and it was already punishingly hot in Serkonos, even as the sun began to sink below the horizon. Without missing a step, he shrugged his jacket off mid-leap and knotted it around his waist. His shirt was already drenched and he could feel his hair sticking wetly to the back of his neck, but all of that hardly mattered now.

He’d gotten his reply.

For how many months had he made his daily sojourn down to the dockyards now? He wasn’t sure. Two? Three? Time was a thing that completely ceased to matter when you spend twelve hour shifts packing fig wine for shipment all over the Isles. HIs daily strolls had become a fact of life, a habit, a reflex, an empty ritual to a god that he was not certain had ever existed. It played out the same way every single day. 

He’d force a smile at the Harbormaster, but not one so forced as to completely conceal his disdain for the man.

“Any news from Gristol, my good man?” he’d ask cheerily, the smile nearly cracking his face in two, his pearly teeth shining like spotlights in his bronze face.

The Harbormaster would then spit at his feet, mechanically, ritually, completely on cue. Most of the time Urvano was quick enough to dodge the blast, but on days where he’d strained to meet the quota for some fancy nobleman’s soiree, the effort was very much wasted.

“Piss off, blighter.” he’d say, the air hissing through the gap between his two front teeth on the S sound.

Sometimes, if Urvano happened to catch him with a cigarette in hand, he’d top it off with a puff of smoke perfectly timed to go straight up his nose.

“Ah.” Urvano would answer, his smile fading, but his politeness never wavering, “Thank you for the update, sir. Same time tomorrow, then?”

“I said, _piss off_.’”

This was pronounced in a low, threatening grumble and Urvano always took it as his sign to leave while the going was good. He wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if it was bad and he had no plans to ever find out.

Every day, he’d stick his hands in his pockets, turn on his heel and trudge to the rotting hole he called a home.

Every day, he’d watch the rays of the setting sun streak the sky shades of crimson and violet as the bustle of the city died down around him.

Every day, he’d put his feet up on the creaking footstool, stare at the ceiling and wonder again why his life had come to this. 

That is, until today.

***

With catlike grace, he swung under a pair of very surprised butchers hauling a crate of live chickens between them. A fruit vendor shouted at him when he landed just a bit too close to his wares after a particularly spirited leap over a crouching child. He slowed only when a crowd of drunks, freshly disgorged from the maw of a closing bar, appeared as a shambling blockage in his path. But by then he was nearly there anyway.

He walked the last few blocks to his destination, his heart thudding in his chest as though he were still running a marathon. He could hardly keep the crazed the smile off his face, the absurd spring from his step. 

At last, down a twisting alleyway, beneath the burned-out bulb of a streetlamp that had not been replaced in half a year, he found the door he sought. If you squinted in the half-light, past the gloss of the berry-red paint, you could almost make out the scratched-out runes that had decorated the door since long before the Abbey had come.

He knocked once for courtesy’s sake and then barged right in.

“Mama!” he shouted, only realizing how loud his voice was until it was too late, excitement quivering inside him like an animal straining to get loose.

The thin, grey woman, elbow-deep in the suds of an ancient washbasin, jerked so violently in his direction that the plate she was scrubbing nearly flew out of her hands.

“ _Sorry!_ ” he whispered, feeling guilty as she gingerly set the plate on the counter, her wrinkly hands quivering. “It’s just- oh, dammit!”

He was struggling to free the letter from its damp envelope without ripping it. His hands were trembling. His fingers were slick with sweat. 

“Ergh!” he grunted, wrenching it free with one last tug, “ _Look!_ ”

Slowly, painfully, the arthritis no doubt flaring up in her wrists again, Cytherea Urvano towelled off her hands, seized her reading glasses from their spot above the kitchen sink and gingerly took the precious paper from her son’s trembling fingers. 

“Dear...Mr...Urvano…” she read carefully, the paper mere inches from her bespeckled face, “Con...concerning the...ah…”

Her shoulders drooped and the glasses slipped down her nose, revealing the pale, opaline discs that had taken the place of her pupils. She always liked to try, cataracts or no. She had been nothing but independent for the entirety of her long life. It was a hard habit to break.

With a sad smile, Urvano gently plucked the letter from her grip and perched himself on the kitchen table. 

“Concerning your recent inquiry into possible reinstatement into the Imperial Navy, I regret to inform you that your request has been roundly denied by a majority of those sitting on the Naval Advisory Board.”

“Well…” Mama murmured, her face falling, “At least he had common decency enough to tell you.”

“However…” Urvano purred, a rakish grin curling his lips as he winked at his mother, “Due to your exemplary prior military career and the injustice of its untimely conclusion, it is my recommendation that you accept a position aboard The Despairing Mermaid, as protection on our expedition to the Pandyssian Continent.”

He paused, looking up just in time to see his mother’s jaw hit the floor.

“Furthermore! Ahem. I intend to keep a close eye on your performance and send a full report of my findings to my colleagues on the Naval Advisory Board. Your father was the finest man I ever had the honor to serve with and it is my fondest wish that the shameful manner in which the Imperial Navy treated his son be reversed. The Despairing Mermaid sets sail from Dunwall Harbor at 8 AM sharp, 12, Month of Timber. I hope to see you aboard. Cordially, Admiral Blake Hemmingsworth.”

“Ha-HA!” she laughed, squawking like an ungainly bird as she sprung to her feet and wrapped her arms around her son, nearly crushing the letter in his hand, “Oh, that’s wonderful, that’s amazing, that’s”-

She suddenly stiffened in his arms.

“O-Oh…” she sighed, breaking away and rubbing at her temples, “You...haven’t eaten yet, have you? I could get the stove running again, scrounge up a few eggs…”

“Mama…” Urvano said softly, his excitement fading away as a creeping sensation of dread scurried up the back of his neck.

She was busying herself about the tiny kitchen at hyper speed. Her hands shook when she shoved handfuls of kindling into the stove, splinters dropping to the freshly-swept floor. 

“Mama.” he repeated, a little more authority in his tone, “What did you see?”

“Nothing!” she snapped with abrupt hardness, spinning on her heel to face him. Her eyes were puffy and red, “Hard or soft-boiled? Scrambled or fried? Over-easy or…”

She was wringing a damp towel in her hands, a crazed look in her foggy eyes. 

“Mama, _please…_ ”

Something popped in the stove, startling them both much more than it should have.

“If you saw something, I need”-

“Eneas…” she whispered, her voice quivering with suppressed sobs, the towel dropping from her fingers with wet plop as she strode toward him. She took his face in her damp, soft hands, her long fingers curling into the warm nooks behind his ears. Her eyes were wet with tears as she tilted his gaze downward to meet hers. 

“I don’t need to _See_ it to know that nothing I can say will stop you from boarding that ship. You need to do this. For yourself, for...for those after you. But...i-if you set f-foot on that cursed continent…you won’t...w-won’t...”

She buried her face in his chest and squeezed him tight.

***

Urvano swirled the tip of his toast in the runny egg yolk and took a bite. The bread was thick and hearty, struck through with dried raisins and apricots. It’d be all hardtack and canned fish, once the Despairing Mermaid set sail. He was trying to savor it while he could.

Mama had pulled out her secret stash of homemade fig cordial in celebration. The dark bottle sat on the table beside two shot glasses, already drained once for a toast to the memory of his father. There’d no doubt be many more before the night was over. There were so many things that deserved toasting, so many hopes, dreams, remembrances.

For the moment, his mother was scrubbing out the frying pan in whatever leftover suds were still in the sink. 

It all seemed so normal.

“Outsider’s balls!” Urvano exclaimed suddenly, spraying crumbs all over the kitchen table, “I have to be in Dunwall in a _month_.”

“Eneas!” Mama laughed from over the sink, “Is that how I taught a gentleman to speak?”

“Nome, Ma…” he mumbled, his mouth already full with another hefty bite of toast.

“But, really!” he said, swallowing thickly, and leaning back in his chair, “That’s not much time. My landlord’s out of town, they’re not going to be too happy with me at the packing plant with that duke’s birthday coming up _and_ I’ve got to secure passage to Dunwall somehow with three hundred coin to my name and I have no idea how that’s going to work, let alone”-

“If you need money…”

“Absolutely not.” 

He squared his jaw, thinking of her pitiful widow’s pension from the Navy.

“I’ll...I’ll find a way. I’ve managed through much worse. I’ll...just...do it again.”

“Okay. But…”

The chair scraped across the floor as she pulled it out and sat down beside him.

“If you won’t take anything else from me...take this…”

She unbuttoned her high collar and tugged at a cord hidden beneath it. At the end of it was an amulet made of brass and bone, worn smooth with time, the metal long tarnished. A jolt of fear went through Urvano’s heart at the sight of it, not so much at the object itself, but at the thought that his mother had been walking among overseers with something so blatantly heretical under her blouse all this time.

She looped the cord over his head and kissed him on the cheek. Her foggy eyes were red again.

“I don’t know how far its protection will take you or...if I will see you again before the end. But...think of me when you look at it and I will hold you to this life as firmly as I can. I know you aren’t much for superstition and you think little of my charms and spells...but do this for an old woman’s comfort, would you?”

Urvano’s eyes were prickling with hot tears now too. He took his mother’s frail hand between his own and squeezed it.

“Yes. Of course I will.”

***

He had nearly forgotten about the bone charm by the time he was walking home. Part of it was the fig cordial, another part, the dizzying whirl of excitement for what was to come. It was only when he caught sight of a couple frantically making love on a park bench that he remembered that it was not the best of ideas to be wearing such things in public. He ducked down a shadowy alley and hurriedly tucked it under his shirt. It was warm against his skin, vibrating with the beat of a song that just barely escaped his memory.

And then, it started to burn. For a moment, it was merely much warmer than it should have been. Then it was as thought a hot iron had been driven into his chest, scouring his lungs, setting his innards aflame. With a cry, he made to rip it out of his shirt and in that instant-

_The jungle canopy stirred above him in an unholy wind, the rustling of the leaves sounding like voices speaking a language long forgotten. The air was thick and heavy, hotter than Bastillian, denser than his mother’s porridge, cloaking him in an inescapable damp. He could feel them, everywhere and nowhere. **They** were coming from beneath his feet, the sound of their stampede a dull roar, a tremor in the ground that vibrated through his body, that played the terrified strings of his mind like a harp. _

_He couldn’t move._

_His feet were bound to the ground by gnarled tree roots that grew as he looked at them. Before his streaming eyes, he saw them loop around his ankles, dig into his calves, tighten the moment he tried to struggle against them. He screamed for help but his throat was raw and his voice was gone. In the absence of all assistance, he wept, the tears flowing down his face to soak into his collar, the lapel of his good white shirt. By the chill light of the moon, he saw that he had not wept ordinary tears, but thick, dark blood._

_But the ground kept on quivering and the voices kept on whispering and **they** were coming! **They** were here! **They** were surging through the undergrowth like a black tide, all claws and teeth and beady eyes that glinted in the night as they saw him!_

_He screamed voicelessly as the tide consumed him, body and soul, biting and hissing and clawing and scratching until there was nothing left._

He blinked.

He was sitting in the fetal position, curled up on the filthy floor of an alleyway in the slums of Bastillian, a heretical bone charm digging into the palm of his white-knuckled hand. He let loose a shaky sigh, rose to his feet, dusted himself off and hastily tucked it away. It was lukewarm to the touch now, no different than any other thing in the warm air of Serkonos. 

His head ached. The memory of something awful clawed at the back of his mind, vying for prominence. He pushed it away with disgust, rubbing at his temples until he felt well enough to carry on.

As he walked, the quiet of the night resting like a blanket on his shoulders, his thoughts turned to other things. Payments, bargaining, ships. All the preparations he’d have to make, the favors he’d need to cash in. 

The face of the man who had told him that he loved him, once.

He brushed the image away with an angry grunt as he slammed the rotten door to his apartment behind him.


	2. Anne Callway - Expedition Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A doctor must choose between staying home to care for her sick sister or setting out on a voyage of scientific discovery. It's not an easy choice.

_Month of Rain, 1804  
Poolwick, Gristol_

Callaway was jolted awake mid-snore by the frantic sound of coughing in the next room over. For a moment, her mind went wild with confusion, her eyes roving over the unfamiliar furniture, her muscles aching in the stiff-backed chair she’d fallen asleep in. Another half-second and it all came rushing back, along with the realization that she’d fallen asleep in her clothes again and badly needed the services of a dry cleaner before she totally ran out of things to wear.

Shoving all that from her mind as quickly as she’d thought it, she leapt to her feet and dashed to her sister’s room. The frail girl, paler than river krust pearls on their mother’s necklace, was struggling to sit up, her eyes bulging as she coughed, her face bright red in the dim glow of the bedside lamp.

“Shhhhh.” Callaway whispered, gently sitting her up and positioning her so that her legs dangled over the side of the bed. “Let it go. It’s okay. The bucket’s right here.”

She coughed so hard it felt as though her ribs were going to crack beneath her clammy skin. Callaway held her, thumping her back until the coughing turned into gagging and the gagging gradually tapered away. The girl was breathing as hard as if she’d run from end to end of the village. Her nightgown was drenched with sweat and Callaway caught sight of several thin lines of rust staining the lacey collar. A jolt of worry shot through her system at that, but she took care to never betray any such emotion in the presence of her sister. 

Carefully, as though she were handling a baby, she helped the thin girl lay down on top of the blankets, snatched a clean towel from the stack on the end table and gently dabbed the sweat from her shivering brow. She’d replace her soggy nightgown with her own nightshirt tonight. It was not as though she was making any use of it. Claire would take care of the blood in the morning, before anyone had a chance to see it in the morning light.

“I’m sorry.” Liz breathed.

All of her buzzing thoughts came to a screeching, calamitous halt.

“Liz, no!” Callaway gasped, “I’ve told you, it’s my job to make you well. It’s no trouble. Please don’t think like that. All that matters is you getting better. Agreed?”

Liz sighed, relaxing into the bedspread, the bags under her eyes like two dark bruises on her porcelain skin. 

“We’ll change the sheets and your clothes and get you back to bed. I’ll be back in five”-

“I saw your letter.”

The words “What letter?” were forming on her lips when her eyes drifted back to the pile of mail on the bedside table and everything came rushing back into place. Of course she’d seen it. Of course she’d set the mail there when a plaintive voice called out for a glass of water while she was halfway to rubbish bin. And of course she’d forgotten entirely what she’d been doing by the time the water was procured. That girl, she didn’t miss a single thing.

“It’s alright if”- Liz said weakly, suppressing a painful tickle in her throat.

“Elizabeth.” Callaway answered, a hard edge creeping into her voice as she scooped up the pile of old bills and the offending letter, “That isn’t anything you need to be concerned about. Now, give me a moment to fetch the linen and we’ll have this bed shipshape again..”

***

After the deed was done and Liz was securely tucked in for the night, Callaway was far too awake to go back to bed herself. She decided to make herself a cup of chamomile tea.

The kitchen was dark, cold and empty. She lit the stove, pulled up a seat and one by one, threw the mail into the hot coals within while she waited for the water to boil. The sight of the fire cheered her and there was something especially satisfying about watching the pages of paper curl into glowing embers. 

As she was about to slip the letter onto the coals, the light of the fire caught on the delicately written words like a bit of loose thread on a hangnail.

“Dr. Callaway…” the voice wheedled in her head from the page, in the same manner as it had spoken in her dreams ever since she’d received the damn thing, in the same tones as the strange little man who had sent it and once spent an entire evening speaking to her of nothing but the uses of Pandyssian Ant Venom. 

“I have been most enthralled by your Treatise on the Uses of Pandyssian Chalk for the Treatment of Sanguinary Ulcers as of late and if you have an interest in exploring the possibility of further study concerning substances from the Continent, then perhaps you might have an interest in my proposition…”

At that moment the kettle whistled, high and clear in the empty room, far too loud for the time of night that it was. She tossed the letter aside, shoved the memory of it away and poured her tea.

***

In her restless sleep, she dreamed of what had been, the images a dizzying jumble of time and place, fate and circumstance.

_**Dear Miss Callaway** , the words echoed in her head, blazing as brightly as the paper they had been printed on. _

_**We are pleased to inform you that after long consideration, we have elected to accept your application to the Academy of Natural Philosophy. You, and several others will be among the first women to walk the halls of our hallowed institution…** _

_**…you are expected to maintain proper decorum at all times and fraternizing in the mens’ dorms or any public place after curfew will not be tolerated.** _

_**We hope that you will be a credit to your sex and Natural Philosophy as a whole…** _

_Liz was a child. Her knees, perpetually scraped. A gap in her smile where her baby tooth had fallen out. She ran to her, her curls bouncing, her silk ribbons shining as she giggled, planting something cold and hard in the palm of her sister’s hand before darting away like a mischievous minnow._

_“Liz…what?” Callaway heard herself calling out after her, half-asleep over a pile of medical texts._

_She opened her palm. It was their father’s old pocketwatch. Hadn’t that been in the attic ever since…_

_The inside of the watch had been replaced with a small, delicate painting of Liz herself._

_**So you won’t forget** , it read, in the minuscule, prim cursive of her sister’s hand._

_**“You only got this grant because you’re a woman, you know. If they gave them out based on merit rather than biological need, why, we’d all be better off…”** _

_A hasty sentiment, badly considered._

_Keep your head down and **work**. That’s all you can do. It’s not right, but it’s not something you have the power to change either…_

_**“You’re kind. You’re very kind.”** she said, choosing her words with utmost care. Every one of them felt heavy on her tongue, ponderous to the touch._

_She could feel all of their eyes staring at her. Piercing her._

_The ring, set with a river krust pearl, a symbol of steadfastness, faithfulness, hovered before her, the bearer on one knee, looking up at her with the softest smile._

_**“But…”** _

_They’d hate her so much. There goes their research, their supposed friendship. Why, why did he have to…_

_**“Love is not something that I have ever taken an interest in.”** _

_Graduation day. Wine on every table. Banners in the hall, music, joy, the exhilaration of walking the boards at last, after all this time. The stars glittering on the Academy Head’s robe as he spoke to the new graduates._

_She felt a great weight pressing down on her, draining all thoughts of merriment, of life, from her chilly frame. For the life of her, she could not understand why._

_She walked alone across the stage, her robe sweeping the weathered boards, her hand closing around the diploma as though it were the only thing preventing her from drowning._

_No other women followed in her wake._

_Residency fast became her daily grind._

_Wake up, put on a clean apron, coffee in the kitchen and to rounds before breakfast._

_Set a broken bone before lunch. Treat a cough later. Deal with the fallout of an industrial accident on the docks. Laudanum for pain, ether for surgery. A man too embarrassed to be looked at by a woman. A woman worried about her pregnancy, but nothing wrong, as far as she can make out. A boy with an addiction none can cure. A dog, hit by the trolley. It was a family pet and the family is not taking it well. Black lips, dry tongues, a wound that would not heal despite all efforts. Sis delicate stitches, easy enough as long as coffee’s available. A man hit by the trolley. A street urchin with a limp and filed-sharp teeth. Sepsis, too late, the smell. Shortness of breath. He never meant to hammer his finger into the wall. Another child on the trolley tracks. Do any of these people look where they’re going? Why why **WHY** do they never-_

_To bed, on an empty cot, apron thrown in the hamper._

_And then, again._

_**“Got something for you.”** _

_“Oh?”_

_**“Remember that ship that made it to the Far Continent and came back with skeleton crew? Big sensation, terrible scandal, all those poor investors, haha. Anyway, their ship’s surgeon - not that the man ever did them much good. Killed by flying fish, if you can believe that. He took a few jumbled notes on medicinal uses of this and that. Had a crate of samples, but there’s not much sense to it. At any rate they’ve donated it to the Academy. Perhaps…you could make some sort of use of it?”** _

_Bubbling fluids, shiny beakers, miracles taking shape before her waiting eyes…_

_**But that letter...** It wasn’t Liz’s writing._

_Liquid mercury in a beaker, quivering, dancing…_

_**I don’t mean to sugar-coat it, but young Miss Callaway is in a bad way…** _

_It had healed the ulcer that had troubled a whaler for over a year. What else could it do?_

_**…getting worse faster than she’s getting better…** _

_If properly dosed, the ant venom was not a poison, but a cure._

_**Bleeding daily…** _

_Please. I’m trying to work. This is important._

_**You best get down here while you can.** _

_Drops of wetness appearing on her notes. What…? Where did this…_

_No…_

_Liz…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to forget._

_It was one thing to be a woman in a man’s profession. It was quite another to be acting like a woman in said profession._

_They could not see._

_But they did._

_**“Look, Doctor. The work we’re all doing…it’s not something that can wait. I can’t guarantee that the money’ll be here when you get back or the position open. It was hard enough to get you in here in the first place, with all the objections raised against you. But…if this is what you need to do…well...”** _

***

“Now, then!” Callaway said merrily, trying her best to hide how tired she was beneath the warmth of her smile, “What’ll it be today?”

She set the latest edition of Fashion for the Modern Woman on the breakfast table for her sister and sat down to her own coffee and toast. Liz poked at her soft-boiled egg half-heartedly and sighed at the magazine.

“Does it matter?” she said softly, a hint of a sad smile playing at the corners of her pale lips. 

“Of course it does!” Callaway said gently, a gleam of mischief in her eye, “Why, however are you to know when a handsome young dandy is going to walk through this door?”

Liz shook her head and chuckled. 

She thumbed her way through the magazine slowly, dwelling on the glossy color prints in the centerfold, the intricate dress patterns, the fine jewelry. Absentmindedly, she managed to eat her entire breakfast without paying the least bit of attention to it. Callaway chuckled to herself at the deviousness of her ruse. 

By the time Claire had come to clear away their plates, Liz was decided. Callway frowned at the chosen picture, pursing her lips as she looked at it sideways. She’d chosen some sort of gravity-defying updo that was all the rage in the Emperor’s Court right now. 

“Is it too hard?” Liz asked in her whispery voice, “I could pick…”

“No, no!” Callaway smiled, rolling up the magazine and sticking it in her back pocket, “Outsider knows I love a challenge. You know, hair styling isn’t really that different from surgery. You’ve got to have a steady hand and the confidence to pull it off and…uh…well…”

Liz laughed, her voice soft and hoarse.

“Well!” Callaway gasped, fanning the embarrassment from her cheeks, “Shall we, then?”

Liz nodded curtly, a small flush of color coloring her own wan features for just a moment.

***

It was delightfully temperate today, considering that it was a Poolwick Spring. The chill rain that had turned the garden into muck all week had ceased for the time being and the morning was suffused with the fresh scent of green things emerging from their slumber.

Callaway rolled Liz down the garden path, carefully steering the wheelchair around the mud puddles and drowned earthworms, until they reached the old sycamore tree with the stone bench beneath it. Callaway frowned at the wetness of the seat and with a shrug, arranged her old jacket as a buffer against it and sat down. This month’s edition of Medical Journal Monthly had also arrived in the mail this morning and she was eager to crack into it. How long had it been since she’d checked up on her old colleague’s work? It had to be less than a year and yet, it felt so much longer than that. 

Liz dozed beneath the tree, a novel that she’d been valiantly trying to finish for about a week now slipping slowly off her lap as she drifted into a dream. Her dark hair was done up in a perfect facsimile of court fashion, gravity defied by means of two dozen bobby pins that Callaway dearly hoped would hold. She’d put a little rouge on her cheeks and a hint of color on her lips. If you looked at her from far away, she didn’t look quite so pale and drawn. Squinting with one eye open, Callaway could almost fool herself into thinking her sister the picture of health. But should she open the other eye and take a closer look, there was nothing she could do to hide the protruding bones of her delicate face. 

Automatically, without even thinking of what she was doing, Callaway’s hand slid into her waistcoat pocket to finger the old silver watch that she carried always. The raised decorations had long been worn smooth and the knob that was meant to keep it closed had broken off some time ago. Before then, it had stopped working. It was old when her sister had dug it from the box of their father’s things and had fared quite bit worse in the hands of a woman who was typically elbow-deep in bodily fluids and obscure chemicals on a good day.

Liz had been so young then.

No, she was still young. It was just...different now.

The entire house had been fumigated, the impacted walls removed, the carpets all torn up. Every scrap of wallpaper had been replaced, the old bedsheets thrown into the fire. The mold that had so devastated her sister’s health and explained their father’s persistent cough was all but eradicated, though Callaway couldn’t help but feel a twinge of fear every single time it rained, creating the perfectly damp environment that such deadly spores thrived in. 

It was the merest spot of luck that she had spent so many years in Dunwall, rather than stay home within the damp walls that she had grown up inside. It was stupid, but sometimes she wondered if she could have done more, had she been there. Had she visited more often.

Liz coughed in her sleep and the book on her lap slid further down her skirt. Callaway caught it the moment before it hit the damp dirt. 

“Oh!” Liz gasped, jerking awake in a fright.

“I’m sorry.” Callaway whispered, “Go back to sleep, it’s alright. Shhh…”

Lix relaxed in her wheelchair as she drew the blanket up to her neck. Her eyes closed and her eyelashes cast deep shadows over the caverns of her eye sockets. 

Callaway pulled her hand from her pocket and was about to delve into her magazine for real when a solemn voice, cracking with effort, tore her entirely out of her thoughts.

“What do you think it’s like…in Pandyssia this time of year?”

“Hmmm…” Callaway thought, playing with her reading glasses, enjoying the momentary diversion to distant shores, “It’s a big place. We know that much. There’s got to be all sorts of climates there. Cold ones, hot ones, damp ones…it all depends on what part you’re in, I suppose.”

“Could you…tell me about it? When you get back?”

Callaway’s jaw tightened.

“Liz, I’m not going anywhere.”

A lock of hair slipped free of its bobby pin bonds and slapped Liz across the face. She opened her eyes, her thin white hands gripping the armrests of the wheelchair as she regarded her sister sadly.

“But…” she said softly, looking at her with pleading eyes, “You do want to go, don’t you?”

“I…” Callaway sighed, throwing her magazine aside at last, “I do and I don’t. I don’t understand it myself. I…I need to get back to my research and I don’t know if I’ll ever have an opportunity like this again and yet…”

She felt her bottom lip starting to quiver and her vision began to go blurry from the buildup of tears in her eyes.

“I…I just…”

Liz reached out and took her hand. It was soft and warm from having been under the blanket. She squeezed it with her feeble strength and smiled. 

“I’ll be here, alright? I’m not going anywhere. There’s...not much else I can do at the moment, though there’s many places that I’d like to be. But, you? You’ve got the whole world in front of you. You can...do so much more than mope in this house with me. It’s..it’s okay. Really. Do what you need to do. I’ll...I’ll be here when you get back.”

“But...your care!” Callaway spat and then slapped a hand to her mouth, in shock at the rudeness of what she’d accidentally done. “Claire can’t be expected to do…”

“There’s money left in Father’s will yet. We’ll hire a nurse. Together. Before you go.”

She smiled, dazzlingly, for the weariness in her face.

Callaway let loose a deep breath that she felt had been building in her chest for quite some time. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

“Alright.” she sniffled, swallowing the last of her tears. There was a hard core of resolution growing in the space in her chest where her sorrow had dwelled all these past months. She was going to Pandyssia. She would make discoveries that no other Islander had ever dreamed of, find cures for every ailment she possibly could. It would be her life’s work and she would not abandon it again. 

All she needed was permission from the one who mattered most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was highly inspired by my experiences with my own sick sister. Obsessively following current fashion trends despite being bedridden and unable to leave the house for long as a coping mechanism? That's a thing we did together. The unaffected sibling being completely unable to focus on work outside of her sister's sickroom? Yeah, that's a thing I did too. My sister wanting me to live the life she couldn't?
> 
> Yeah.


End file.
